Suu Kyi's father was born in 1915, when Burma was a colony of Britain. A devout Buddhist, Aung San became a leader in Burma's struggle for independence. During World War II, he believed that Japan would be the route to Burma's freedom, and he fought with the Japanese when they invaded the country. But when they proved to be even more despotic than the British, Aung San and his compatriots switched sides and fought with the British to expel the Japanese. At the end of the war, Britain and Burma worked together to set up a parliamentary structure so that the Burmese could take control of their country. Aung San's party swept the elections, but only months later, in 1947, he and several members of his government were shot dead by political rivals. Soon after that, Burma descended into a civil war among ethnic groups.

Suu Kyi was 2 at the time of her father's death. Her mother, Khin Kyi, was a vital figure in the early years of Burma's independence, serving in several government capacities. In 1960 Khin Kyi was appointed ambassador to India, moving to New Delhi with her daughter and two sons. While Suu Kyi got a good British high school education, her mother made sure that her daughter did not stray from the Buddhist path. Suu Kyi was a voracious reader and had a particular fascination with Mahatma Gandhi. In 1964, Suu Kyi enrolled at Oxford, getting degrees in philosophy and economics in 1967.

In the 1991 Nobel Prize Annual, Irwin Abrams sketched a bit of biography from Suu Kyi's time at Oxford. "The diminutive beauty from Burma was a striking figure. Her close friend of those days, Ann Pasternak Slater, remembers how her 'tight, trim lungi (the Burmese version of the sarong) and her upright carriage, her firm moral convictions and inherited social grace contrasted sharply' with the casual manners and ill-defined moral standards of the English students.

"Slater recalls [Suu Kyi's] curiosity about Western ways. Despite Buddhist injunctions, she took one little sip of an alcoholic drink just to find out what it was like -- and didn't like it. And so that she could know the experience of other woman students, who returned from late dates after the gates were locked and had to climb over the garden wall of their dormitory to get in, she had a friend from India bring her back from a dinner date at midnight, so he could help her over the wall. Slater also remembers the characteristic determination with which Suu Kyi learned to bicycle in her lungi."

After graduating from Oxford, Suu Kyi moved to New York, where she worked for the United Nations secretariat and volunteered as a social worker at a New York hospital. In 1972 she married Michael Aris, a scholar of Asian literature and history. While Aris studied in England, they had two sons, Alexander and Kim. Suu Kyi taught Burmese studies at Oxford while doing postgraduate research in her country's history. The family returned frequently to Burma to spend time with Khin Kyi, who was retired in her Rangoon home.

Things were not going well in Burma. For years the democratic government had tried to maintain control during civil war, but a junta led by Gen. Ne Win took over in 1958, and consolidated power in 1962. He abolished the constitution, banned all political parties, nationalized many businesses, installed military personnel in government positions and announced he was leading Burma down the "socialist path." The downward spiral had begun.

As economic and social conditions unraveled under the inept dictator's mismanagement, civil unrest began to erupt in the '80s. Students organized and held rallies demanding restoration of democracy and human rights. On Aug. 8, 1988, a massive general strike and demonstration were declared. Ne Win responded by calling out the troops. Over the next several days, soldiers fired on crowds, killing between 1,000 and 10,000 civilians. Still, the demonstrations continued, and the government actually seemed to back down. But then a new set of generals, calling themselves SLORC, asserted that they were in control, and ratcheted up the repression further.

Coincident with all this, Suu Kyi was in Rangoon, caring for her mother (who had suffered a stroke) and watching the tumult from the sidelines. After the massacres, she decided to take action. Speaking to a huge crowd under a poster of her father, she said, "I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on." With her simple and direct demands for civil rights and her insistence on nonviolent resistance, she won over thousands of Burmese and became the country's avatar of democracy.

Meanwhile, SLORC surprised everyone by announcing that a "free and fair" election would be held in 1989, open to all parties. More than 200 parties registered to run, but the NLD, thanks to Suu Kyi's participation, drew the most support. The organization was also one of the few that had the courage to defy an SLORC ban on public assembly, an edict that effectively precluded anyone from campaigning. Not only that, SLORC insisted on vetting all public documents issued by political parties. Suu Kyi, the NLD's nominal leader, simply refused to accede to any of SLORC's demands. She continued to campaign around the country, facing phalanxes of armed guards everywhere she spoke.

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